So many approaches have been used to effect delivery of proteins, particularly proteins that have medically beneficial applications, to desired target cells that a survey of this field would be both inappropriate and unhelpful. It should be noted, however, that virtually all delivery systems presently employed address the problem of penetrating barriers to the circulatory system of the subject organism and do not address the problem of uptake by particular cells targeted for treatment with the protein. Thus, in the simplest form of ensuring penetration of these barriers, intravenous injection of a solution of an active ingredient, delivery of the protein merely results in the active ingredient circulating in the blood, but without provision for any special mechanism to ensure that the protein will find its way into the cytoplasm or nucleus of a cell that it is expected either to treat or to kill. While a specific cell may be targeted, e.g., through the use of antibody, penetration through cellular membranes is effected by whatever mechanism(s) is normally used by cells, or the appropriate site of treatment is necessarily extracellular.
It is, of course, established that viral particles are capable of introducing foreign nucleic acids and proteins into cells in the normal course of infection. Use of viral particles to transport genetic material into target mammalian cells for purposes of gene therapy appears to be the major approach now being followed to develop this technique. See, e.g., McCormick, D., Bio/Technology (1985) 3:689-693. In addition, Lang, R. A., et al., Cell (1985) 43:531-542 were able to use a similar system with GM-CSF to induce autocrine growth in a murine blood-cell line. In the Lang work, a cDNA-encoding GM-CSF was inserted into a Moloney murine leukemia-based vector under control of the promoter/enhancer of the viral long-terminal repeat, and infectious, helper-free virus was produced by transfecting into the .psi. psi-2-packaging cell line. The GMV virus produced was able to effect GM-CSF production in a hemopoietic cell line. This ability has not heretofore been used to transport designated protein drugs in an intact organism, however.
Retroviruses in particular have been used as vectors for foreign gene insertion, and the biology of retroviruses is, to a significant degree, understood: Retroviruses consist of a single stranded RNA genome encapsulated in a protein envelope. The genome itself, reading from the 5' to 3' end, contains a cap, a 5' untranslated region, a segment of RNA designated ".psi." which is necessary for the RNA to be packaged into protein--i.e., a packaging site, and then the coding sequences for several proteins--the retroviral core protein (gag); reverse transcriptase, to facilitate an intermediate stage consisting of a DNA transcript (pol) and the viral envelope or capsid protein (env), all followed by some 3' untranslated sequences. The three viral proteins are needed for the infectivity of the viral genome; the packaging site is needed to produce additional infective virus.
Retroviruses experience a "proviral" stage which contains a double-stranded cDNA copy of the protein-encoding region of the RNA. However, in this stage, the untranslated 3' and 5' regions are modified to obtain, at either end of this protein-encoding cDNA, a long terminal repeat (LTR) which provides the appropriate promoter and enhancer sequences to effect DNA transcription as well as transcription-terminating sequences at operable positions with respect to the coding portions.
In ordinary infection, the proviral double-stranded cDNA can be integrated into the host cell genome and from there effect the production of additional virus particles containing the RNA genome packaged in its protein capsule. For this procedure to take place, it is critical that the .psi. packaging site be present in the provirus.
It has occurred to others that the protein encoding sequences of the retroviruses could be replaced with those for a desired protein so as to employ the expression systems of the virus when the modified virus infects host cells. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,405,712 and Lang (supra). However, in order to achieve this, the modified viral genome requires a helper virus capable of synthesizing the capsid proteins and packaging the RNA transcripts of the foreign DNA.
Thus, for "gene therapy" the proviral DNA form is inserted into a suitable vector, replicated and packaged into viral envelopes with the aid of a helper virus. For a general review, see Anderson, W. F., Science (1984) 226:401-409; Coffin, J., "Genome Structure", in RNA Tumor Viruses, Vol 2, Weiss et al., eds, 2d ed, (1985), Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.
The most commonly used retroviruses for study of gene therapy have been either the murine sarcoma virus (MSV) or the Moloney murine leukemia virus (MoMLV). (Mann, R., et al., Cell (1983) 33:153-159.) The proviral form of these retroviruses is isolated and inserted into more or less standard bacterial cloning vectors for amplification. The proviral insert, which contains the gag-, pol and env-encoding mRNA flanked by long terminal repeats containing the control sequences, along with a packaging site is then manipulated to replace the region containing the protein-encoding RNA with the desired foreign gene. If this DNA is transfected into host cells which have been infected with complete virus or with defective virus lacking only the packaging site, the RNA which is synthesized from the modified provirus is then packaged into virions for reinfection of another cell. This provides a mechanism for introduction of the DNA encoding the desired active ingredient or drug into the cell by infection.
There are two ways to go about this. In one approach, the modified proviral DNA is transfected into cells which bear an infection from the unmodified virus, co-residing in the cell. The normal viral vectors will synthesize the packaging materials and some of the mRNA produced by the modified provirus will be packaged in a manner analogous to the normal viral RNA and then can be used to infect target cell for the production of protein. Along with these commandeered viral envelopes, however, will be a certain number of repackaged normal viral RNAs which, if not separated from the "delivery truck" viruses simply cause additional virus infection in host cells infected with the products of this virion production round.
In a more useful approach, the provirus cloning vector containing the desired gene is used to transfect a cell which has been genetically modified to produce defective viral envelopes which contain no viral genomic RNA--in effect, empty delivery trucks. These cells are obtained by integration of the proviral form of a mutant retrovirus lacking the .psi. packaging site, and several such cell lines are available in the art to all that request them. Two of these lines, designated .psi.-1 or .psi.-2 are extensively described in Mann, R., et al., Cell (1983) 33:153-159 (supra) and are made by transfecting host NIH 3T3 fibroblast cells with a plasmid containing MoMLV proviral inserts from which the .psi. packaging site had been deleted. The .psi.-2 cells apparently produce several empty viral envelopes per cell corresponding to the viral envelope of the native virus in the course of a generation. When these cells are transfected with proviral DNA containing both a foreign gene and the packaging site, .psi., they package the mRNA transcript from the proviral DNA containing the foreign gene into these empty envelopes to generate modified viruses which can infect any cells (murine in this case) which are normally hosts for MoMLV. It should be noted, however, that this recombinant, modified virus is defective in that it cannot cause the production of additional modified (or other) virions in the cell it "infects". It is able to cause the production of the protein the gene encodes in the "infected" cell, but the infection cannot spread to additional cells because no additional virions are produced.
More useful than .psi.-2 for the preparation of medicaments in the present invention are the .psi.-AM lines, which are available from Cone, R. D., et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) (1984) 81:6349-6353. These lines are also obtained by transfecting NIH 3T3 cells, but with a vector designated pMAV-.psi.-. This vector also contains an insert of a defective provirus which lacks the .psi. packaging site. However, pMAV-.psi.- is a hybrid encoding the gag-pol sequences of MoMLV and envelope sequences derived from the amphotropic virus 4070A. The empty capsids produced by these cell lines package RNA transcripts of cotransfected modified proviral DNA to produce pseudo viruses which recognize and infect human, rat, and mouse cells.
It has recently been observed that retroviral vectors carrying gag sequences exhibit higher titers than viruses that lack these sequences. Bender, et al., 1987, J. of Virology, 61(5):1639-1646. Such high titer viruses facilitate efficient infection of various cells/tissues that are targets for gene therapy. It is thought that the high titers of these viruses is related to the presence of gag region sequences that hithertofore were not thought to be involved in packaging of viral RNA into virions, and thus may allow for more efficient packaging. Regardless, such high titer retroviral vectors will have applications in gene therapy.
Thus, the art provides a system for moving genes into susceptible cells which has been, in the past, employed only for gene therapy or for generation of autocrine growth factors. These methods inevitably utilize an ex-vivo exposure of targeted cells to the retroviral vector; for example, in gene therapy, bone marrow cells are removed and treated, and then reimplanted. In the present invention, an analogous system is mustered to deliver pharmaceuticals to target cells using conventional methods of administration to produce a highly dead-end, localized "infection".